Sunday 26 February 2012

RuPay: India’s Own Card Brand

There are 225 Million ATM cards in India, of which 90 Million are from a single Bank- State Bank of India, 0.55 Million merchants have PoS machines, Rs 3000 Crore is being dispensed every day from ATM machines. We are using American Branded Visa and Master Cards for all these. How much money they are making from giving their technology and brand name? What is the volume of personal financial data is getting transferred to US every day? So there comes an idea of India’s own card brand- RuPay.

NPCI- National Payment Corporation of India is a section 25 non profit organization formed by RBI and other Indian Banks. To bring the competition in cards, reduce the cost of card payments and card issuance and most importantly to secure the data within the nation NPCI has brought its own brand of card called RuPay. Already 12 co-operative banks and Regional Rural Banks are using the RuPay ATM cards, which can be used to withdraw cash from ATMs. By the end of March 2012, debit card will be launched using the flat form of Axis Bank and SBI as acquirer (bank to which PoS machines belongs to) and issuer of cards and Union Bank of India and Bank of India as card issuer. RuPay card holder can do shopping by April 2012. It will be ready for online transactions i.e. ecommerce by June 2012.

Apart from the main stream card business RuPay is also concentrating on financial inclusion. Adhar enabled biometric cards are being issued in Jarkhand by Axis Bank, Bank of India and SBI. RBI has given permission to 18 prepaid card service provider to issue prepaid cards with easy KYC to non bank customers and migrant labours.

RuPay will not be just an domestic card. RuPay has tie up with Discover Cards which is a neutral player for Indian market and 3rd largest card issuer (Visa and Master occupy first two positions and Amex occupy the position next to Discover. RuPay cost is 50% lesser than the Visa and Master cards which are dominating Indian market.

Also read A cashless life to come soon! about the mobile payment system developed by NCPI.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good Post Akshay...
Indeed it's a good attempt for having our own card brand.

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